Learning From Google Penguin 3.0

Google Penguin

1. What is Google Penguin?

2. Has My Site Been Hit by Google Penguin?

3. Google Penguin Recovery

4. Link Removals

5. Google Disavow Tool

6. Disavow File Tips and Tricks

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7. Post Penguin 3.0 Link Building

What is Google Penguin?The Google Penguin algorithm updates are designed to decrease the rankings of websites that

have used black-hat (low quality) link building in order to manipulate Google ranking results

Penguin UpdatesPenguin 1 on April 24, 2012 (impacting around

3.1% of queries)

Penguin 2 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less

than 0.1%)

Penguin 3 on October 5, 2012 (impacting

around 0.3% of queries)

Penguin 4 (AKA Penguin 2.0) on May 22, 2013

(impacting 2.3% of queries)

Penguin 5 (AKA Penguin 2.1) on October 4,

2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)

Penguin 6 (AKA Penguin 3.0) on October 17,

2014 (impacting less than 1% English queries)

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Has My Site Been Hit by Google Penguin?There are many tools now available to determine how Google Algorithm updates have affected

your site

Penguin Analysis ToolsBaracuda Digital’s Panguin Tool

(http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-

tool/)

Penguin Penalty Analysis Tool

(http://reconsideration.org/)

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Google Penguin RecoveryWhile some improvements can be made from cleaning up low quality backlinking activity, sites

that have been significantly hit by Penguin updates may not see a full recovery until the next

update arrives

What to Do Now?Now is the time to clean up your backlink profile

Remove links from private blog networks,

article marketing sites, and low quality directory

submissions

Submit all low quality links to the Google

Disavow Tool

Stop building sh*t links

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Link RemovalsRemoving bad links is the best way to clean things up. This will help your rankings in Google

as well as other search engines

What’s the Process?Contact the website

Ask to remove the link. Provide details about

the anchor text and the page containing the

link. Try to make it as easy as possible for the

site owner to remove the link

Write a personal email asking to remove the

link. These sites may be getting smashed with

link removal requests and they don’t respond

well to templated emails requests

Keep a spreadsheet with details about the link,

contact details, removal request dates and the

results

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Google Disavow ToolSometimes having a link removed is not easy or even possible. Many low quality directories are even

trying to make money out of these Google updates by creating listings then asking for money to remove

them. The Google Disavow Tool enables webmasters to ask Google to put a virtual nofollow tag onto

each of these links

Which Links Do I

Disavow?Disavowing links from low quality

domains should be done at the domain

level. This ensures new listings or urls

changed within these websites are also

ignored

I also disavow the following links to be

sure all bases are covered; 404 links, low

quality nofollowed links, websites no

longer indexed in Google (503 no

gateway) using the internet wayback

machine to determine relevance and

quality (http://archive.org/web/)

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Disavow File Tips and TricksUsing the Disavow Tool in the wrong way can hurt your site. If you incorrectly disavow good links you

can do even more damage to search rankings

Good Stuff to Know

Comments used in disavow files are for your own

reference. The Google webspam team does not read

them

Sub-domains can also be disavowed by using the

domain: operator (domain:spam.wordpress.com)

A link can be re-instated by removing it from the

disavow file and re-uploading the file

Disavowed links still show up in Webmaster Tools so

using a link tool like Link Research Tools Link Detox

can help speed things up

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Post Penguin 3.0 Link BuildingGetting quality links to your site is time consuming and costly but worth it in the long run

Quality Link Building

Build quality content that people will

link to

Create infographics and other

sharable content such as videos

List your site on quality industry

directories

Links should be built on relevant

websites

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WATCH OUT FOR PENGUINS!